PocketOcean
53 reviews liked by PocketOcean
The £0.79 I paid feels like the right price for this. Not in the cost = value sense - I have paid far more for games I've appreciated far less - but as a symbolic act that forms part of the Dog Days experience's larger whole. From the moment I clicked on the Steam launcher, the game started its audio-visual assault - taking over both my monitors, refusing to run in borderless or windowed mode, crashing to desktop when I tinkered with the AA settings, running my modern raytracer rig hot before I'd even seen the main menu. It was every Fuck You that Backloggd had promised me it would be, and I hadn't even clicked on "Start campaign" yet! Wow!
This may all sound like facile shithousery, but there is something kinda special about a game with Square Enix and IO Interactive title cards trying its absolute hardest to assault you through the screen. Title screens are an important part of the Gaming Experience, and the Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days title screen is no exception - hitting you with a barrage of low-kbps door-knocking sound effects, poorly-mixed raindrops and presumable Chinese swearing. Two paragraphs in and I haven't even pressed the Any key yet - that's how you know this is a game worth talking about! Yowza!
At the time this game was released, I was all over the cover-shooting scene - Gears, Ghost Recon, Uncharted, Vanquish - the whole hole-hiding lot. Gears of War 2, was, and still is, a 5/5+10/10 Certified: Awesome banger in my eyes. Landing an active reload and separating a locust's chest from its dick and balls will always feel (Marcus Fenix voice) Nice! to me, But could I have handled this game back in 2010? You've all heard of the Cool Ranch Dorito Effect, but this game is the Moldly Stale Nacho Cheese Dorito Effect - an alluring flavour so overpoweringly awful that you can barely handle the taste. But something about it just keeps bringing you back... This is Woke Up This Morning (Nightcore Remix) in video game form. Awesome!
It blows my mind that this game has splitscreen co-op. It does not blow my mind to learn that the splitscreen co-op is apparently broken in all sorts of offensive and ridiculous ways - it's so perfectly fitting in so many many ways that elude elucidation. It's now a Life Goal for me to play through this thing in splitscreen with a buddy while we're both spun out of our minds on something or other. It would whip so much fucking sack. I feel like splitscreen Dog Days would function as a drug in and of itself. Even if I wasn't blitzed, I feel like it would still give me a hangover the next day. Can you imagine two guys doing that sprinting animation at the same time while overlapping "SHT YOU CNT!!" "FCK PSS!!" audio files play at different levels over the top of each other and six other stock uzi sound effects of variable volume? It would be sick! Fuck yeah!
It always kinda bothered me when people told me No More Heroes was "belligerent by design" as part of some larger Art Game whole - it was just boring as hell! (Travis Touchdown voice) Fck off! Even if it was intentional, No More Heroes always had its sneakers halfway into its player-hostile concept. Kane & Lynch 2, by contrast, is completely unafraid of confrontation with the player on the other side of the keyboard/gamepad. Like killing people, do you, nerd? No More Heroes 2 (released the same year as Kane & Lynch 2) tried to take the antagonistic nature of the series further towards real meaningful stuff, but it looks like Little Baby Shit in comparison to Dog Days. Suda51 apologises for wounding you. IO Interactive interactively pisses in your wound - and maybe fucks it too, before crashing to desktop! This* is how you challenge your player about all their endless killing and collecting. God damn! Are you enjoying yourself?
I was gonna do a paragraph where I lamented the fact that the game lacks that final furlough of audio/visual/gameplay polish to complement the art vibe that almost takes this to 5 Star Status, but in the process of writing this I realised that the game just wouldn't land the same if you could actually hear the music or think clearly over the sound of a shotgun getting stuck in an audio loop. If I'd been able to clear the rooftop chase the first time without being wiped out by a fucked up ragdoll distracting me and causing me to run into a glitched-out cop who couldn't find cover, I wouldn't have been half as aware of the artifice of video game running-and-gunning-and-murdering. Holy shit! Am I enjoying myself? No! Five stars!!!!
This may all sound like facile shithousery, but there is something kinda special about a game with Square Enix and IO Interactive title cards trying its absolute hardest to assault you through the screen. Title screens are an important part of the Gaming Experience, and the Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days title screen is no exception - hitting you with a barrage of low-kbps door-knocking sound effects, poorly-mixed raindrops and presumable Chinese swearing. Two paragraphs in and I haven't even pressed the Any key yet - that's how you know this is a game worth talking about! Yowza!
At the time this game was released, I was all over the cover-shooting scene - Gears, Ghost Recon, Uncharted, Vanquish - the whole hole-hiding lot. Gears of War 2, was, and still is, a 5/5+10/10 Certified: Awesome banger in my eyes. Landing an active reload and separating a locust's chest from its dick and balls will always feel (Marcus Fenix voice) Nice! to me, But could I have handled this game back in 2010? You've all heard of the Cool Ranch Dorito Effect, but this game is the Moldly Stale Nacho Cheese Dorito Effect - an alluring flavour so overpoweringly awful that you can barely handle the taste. But something about it just keeps bringing you back... This is Woke Up This Morning (Nightcore Remix) in video game form. Awesome!
It blows my mind that this game has splitscreen co-op. It does not blow my mind to learn that the splitscreen co-op is apparently broken in all sorts of offensive and ridiculous ways - it's so perfectly fitting in so many many ways that elude elucidation. It's now a Life Goal for me to play through this thing in splitscreen with a buddy while we're both spun out of our minds on something or other. It would whip so much fucking sack. I feel like splitscreen Dog Days would function as a drug in and of itself. Even if I wasn't blitzed, I feel like it would still give me a hangover the next day. Can you imagine two guys doing that sprinting animation at the same time while overlapping "SHT YOU CNT!!" "FCK PSS!!" audio files play at different levels over the top of each other and six other stock uzi sound effects of variable volume? It would be sick! Fuck yeah!
It always kinda bothered me when people told me No More Heroes was "belligerent by design" as part of some larger Art Game whole - it was just boring as hell! (Travis Touchdown voice) Fck off! Even if it was intentional, No More Heroes always had its sneakers halfway into its player-hostile concept. Kane & Lynch 2, by contrast, is completely unafraid of confrontation with the player on the other side of the keyboard/gamepad. Like killing people, do you, nerd? No More Heroes 2 (released the same year as Kane & Lynch 2) tried to take the antagonistic nature of the series further towards real meaningful stuff, but it looks like Little Baby Shit in comparison to Dog Days. Suda51 apologises for wounding you. IO Interactive interactively pisses in your wound - and maybe fucks it too, before crashing to desktop! This* is how you challenge your player about all their endless killing and collecting. God damn! Are you enjoying yourself?
I was gonna do a paragraph where I lamented the fact that the game lacks that final furlough of audio/visual/gameplay polish to complement the art vibe that almost takes this to 5 Star Status, but in the process of writing this I realised that the game just wouldn't land the same if you could actually hear the music or think clearly over the sound of a shotgun getting stuck in an audio loop. If I'd been able to clear the rooftop chase the first time without being wiped out by a fucked up ragdoll distracting me and causing me to run into a glitched-out cop who couldn't find cover, I wouldn't have been half as aware of the artifice of video game running-and-gunning-and-murdering. Holy shit! Am I enjoying myself? No! Five stars!!!!
Dead Space
2008
It's a pretty solid action horror game pulling from the best parts of a whole bunch of different scifi horror properties. The RIG suit is a pretty great design and repurposing deep space engineering and repair tools as weapons is really cool. There are a lot of satisfying weapons in this game, but it's really hard to beat the starting Plasma Cutter. It's useful the entire game and has a pretty good sound profile.
That was incredible but I'm such a coward lol, had to play this in short bursts because I would get so immersed and stressed. Does not help that my name's James too. But yeah, happy to finally know why SH2 is considered one of the best games ever - a real "I get it now" moment. Plus now I can enjoy the OST I loved even before playing this with context. I've already spent hours on further videos and reading like this excellent page: https://www.silenthillmemories.net/sh2/plot_analysis_en.htm
(I know I could've pulled back the curtain and game-ified it by recklessly charging through every new level until dying and reloading saves with enemy + area layouts memorized but I wanted to keep the experience "pure")
(I know I could've pulled back the curtain and game-ified it by recklessly charging through every new level until dying and reloading saves with enemy + area layouts memorized but I wanted to keep the experience "pure")
A Short Hike
2019
What a sweet game that so perfectly succeeds at what it aims to do. Made me desperately want to get out and hike.
Haunting Ground
2005
An extended rape metaphor that's made muddier by the game's inability to not buy into Riccardo's weirdness about Fiona. The gameplay rocks, and it's great at making you feel helpless, but it's hard to take the game seriously when it can't seem to decide if sexualizing Fiona is bad and creepy, or normal and fine.
Golf With Your Friends is a mini golf simulation game where you play on gigantic and elaborate mini golf courses. The courses all have their own unique themes and obstacles to them, and the game actually does require and reward having a good amount of skill and mastery over its physics. It’s a game that can be aggravating to play at times, but that’s part of the fun. As long as you’re playing the game with a group of friends that don’t take the game too seriously, it manages to be an overall good time, but there’s still a degree of frustration that comes with this game that can be inescapable for some.
I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that makes me as irrationally angry as this. I have never been able to play this game without getting a little bit worked up over it, and while that is certainly part of the fun, the frustration can really get to you at times. I think that the attitude of the friend group you play with can also impact your enjoyment as well. If no one’s taking it too seriously, it’s not a big deal, but I’ve played the game with former friends in the past where everyone would just constantly heckle each other and it makes the game way more frustrating to play than it otherwise would be.
I’ve had good times with this game, and I’ve had bad times with this game. I think your enjoyment will primarily hinge on the people you play with, so make sure you only play it with good people (or at least people that aren’t obnoxious when they do well/put others down when they’re struggling).
I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that makes me as irrationally angry as this. I have never been able to play this game without getting a little bit worked up over it, and while that is certainly part of the fun, the frustration can really get to you at times. I think that the attitude of the friend group you play with can also impact your enjoyment as well. If no one’s taking it too seriously, it’s not a big deal, but I’ve played the game with former friends in the past where everyone would just constantly heckle each other and it makes the game way more frustrating to play than it otherwise would be.
I’ve had good times with this game, and I’ve had bad times with this game. I think your enjoyment will primarily hinge on the people you play with, so make sure you only play it with good people (or at least people that aren’t obnoxious when they do well/put others down when they’re struggling).
The real benefit of living in the future isn't the high-end 4K videogames we get. It's that legacy publishers are desperate enough that they'll let the world play all their killer Japan-only shit.
Hebereke is one of the best games on the Famicom/NES. Easily in my top 5, anyway. It's a full-blown Metroidvania with the sensibilities of Parodius. Stuff that used to get lumped together under the umbrella of "mad Jap games", that I now appreciate as "funny guys making good jokes". There's no backstory to any of its weird characters, or much of a plot. It's just daft stuff jumping around and crows that take explosive dogshits on you. I can enjoy serious, lore-heavy, socially relevant games as much as anybody, but shit like this is definitely my comfort zone. Hebereke's characters don't even seem like they've been designed with the game in mind. In the years following, they've appeared in puzzle games, stupid experimental titles and for much longer than you'd expect, yonkoma manga characters in the back of games magazines. They're just silly doodles, and we don't really care about who they are. In the game's intro, Hebe starts explaining the backstory and gives up halfway, resolving "Y'know what? I really can't be bothered. Read the backstory in the manual or something." Beautiful.
This release just as half-baked and crummy. It's the Famicom game running in an emulator. There are modern conveniences, like a rewind and save system, but it's all fairly rudimentary. There's also an Achievements system, that I was quick to disable in the settings. The most jarring thing is the Japanese text. You can switch between English and Japanese in the menus, but everything in-game has been left untouched. They have bothered to do a full translation of everything in it, but you access this by watching each scene play out in Japanese and then browse to a menu to view the new English dialogue boxes. I'd suspect that if the emulator can track player progress well enough to implement an achievement system, overlaying the dialogue boxes with English text wouldn't be outside the realm of possibilities, but I guess Sunsoft didn't really think of that, and we're stuck playing a barely-localised game.
There had been an English version of Hebereke before, but that was one of those awkward early-90s localisations. Released in limited numbers in limited territories, Ufouria: The Saga basically stripped out all the humour and mad shit from the game, replacing it with bland toyetic filler. Curiously, Ufouria doesn't appear in this version, even though screenshots, artwork and full scans of the German manual do. I'm not going to cry over not getting access to a version of the game I like less, but I do think it's a shame for those with a fondness or nostalgia for this specific wart on videogame history. I grew up in the PAL region too. I remember the hazards of navigating the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, with the Sonic Team, Fleetway, Archie, AoStH and SatAM continuities all fighting for dominance on toy packaging and pillowcases. I don't like sacrificing Lylat Wars for the technically superior Star Fox 64. We probably should be able to play Ufouria, even if I'm never ever going to turn it on.
Hebereke's design mainly benefits from its simplicity. There are none of those vertical shafts of endless platforms that you see in early Metroid. It's much more modest than that. If you know where you're going, you can access any spot on the map within a couple of minutes. Over the course of the game, you'll encounter other characters who will join your party, and each of them come with their own abilities. You'll have to switch between them on the Select menu, but this isn't too much, right? People like Mega Man. Sometimes, when you're switching characters to get past blocked-off areas, or exploit a mechanic to bypass an area quickly, it can feel liberating. There are instances where it feels a little over the top. Only one of your characters can walk on ice, but they have the crappest jump, so you sometimes have to take the run up as O-chan, switch to another character for the jump, and switch back for the landing. It might have been nice to shortcut this by dedicating each shoulder button to switching to each character or something, but again, this is a fairly untouched Famicom ROM. I don't mind this stuff, personally. I've completed Game Gear games on original hardware. I do worry about the appeal for those who have never used a floppy disk before, though.
It's a breezy, silly little game, and its eccentric charm carries a lot of it. One of your guys is a ghost who hits himself in the head with a hammer, and his eyes fly out and attack enemies. There's a tough boss in a suit of armour, and when you successfully break it, there's just a big dumb cat standing there, waiting for you to kill it. I really like Hebereke. I like coming back to rough, old games every now and then, to keep my values in check, and there's few that I have a better time with. If you're going through the heavy-hitter NES games, and you're stuck looking at stuff like Zelda 2 and Startropics, maybe give Hebereke a shot first.
Hebereke is one of the best games on the Famicom/NES. Easily in my top 5, anyway. It's a full-blown Metroidvania with the sensibilities of Parodius. Stuff that used to get lumped together under the umbrella of "mad Jap games", that I now appreciate as "funny guys making good jokes". There's no backstory to any of its weird characters, or much of a plot. It's just daft stuff jumping around and crows that take explosive dogshits on you. I can enjoy serious, lore-heavy, socially relevant games as much as anybody, but shit like this is definitely my comfort zone. Hebereke's characters don't even seem like they've been designed with the game in mind. In the years following, they've appeared in puzzle games, stupid experimental titles and for much longer than you'd expect, yonkoma manga characters in the back of games magazines. They're just silly doodles, and we don't really care about who they are. In the game's intro, Hebe starts explaining the backstory and gives up halfway, resolving "Y'know what? I really can't be bothered. Read the backstory in the manual or something." Beautiful.
This release just as half-baked and crummy. It's the Famicom game running in an emulator. There are modern conveniences, like a rewind and save system, but it's all fairly rudimentary. There's also an Achievements system, that I was quick to disable in the settings. The most jarring thing is the Japanese text. You can switch between English and Japanese in the menus, but everything in-game has been left untouched. They have bothered to do a full translation of everything in it, but you access this by watching each scene play out in Japanese and then browse to a menu to view the new English dialogue boxes. I'd suspect that if the emulator can track player progress well enough to implement an achievement system, overlaying the dialogue boxes with English text wouldn't be outside the realm of possibilities, but I guess Sunsoft didn't really think of that, and we're stuck playing a barely-localised game.
There had been an English version of Hebereke before, but that was one of those awkward early-90s localisations. Released in limited numbers in limited territories, Ufouria: The Saga basically stripped out all the humour and mad shit from the game, replacing it with bland toyetic filler. Curiously, Ufouria doesn't appear in this version, even though screenshots, artwork and full scans of the German manual do. I'm not going to cry over not getting access to a version of the game I like less, but I do think it's a shame for those with a fondness or nostalgia for this specific wart on videogame history. I grew up in the PAL region too. I remember the hazards of navigating the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, with the Sonic Team, Fleetway, Archie, AoStH and SatAM continuities all fighting for dominance on toy packaging and pillowcases. I don't like sacrificing Lylat Wars for the technically superior Star Fox 64. We probably should be able to play Ufouria, even if I'm never ever going to turn it on.
Hebereke's design mainly benefits from its simplicity. There are none of those vertical shafts of endless platforms that you see in early Metroid. It's much more modest than that. If you know where you're going, you can access any spot on the map within a couple of minutes. Over the course of the game, you'll encounter other characters who will join your party, and each of them come with their own abilities. You'll have to switch between them on the Select menu, but this isn't too much, right? People like Mega Man. Sometimes, when you're switching characters to get past blocked-off areas, or exploit a mechanic to bypass an area quickly, it can feel liberating. There are instances where it feels a little over the top. Only one of your characters can walk on ice, but they have the crappest jump, so you sometimes have to take the run up as O-chan, switch to another character for the jump, and switch back for the landing. It might have been nice to shortcut this by dedicating each shoulder button to switching to each character or something, but again, this is a fairly untouched Famicom ROM. I don't mind this stuff, personally. I've completed Game Gear games on original hardware. I do worry about the appeal for those who have never used a floppy disk before, though.
It's a breezy, silly little game, and its eccentric charm carries a lot of it. One of your guys is a ghost who hits himself in the head with a hammer, and his eyes fly out and attack enemies. There's a tough boss in a suit of armour, and when you successfully break it, there's just a big dumb cat standing there, waiting for you to kill it. I really like Hebereke. I like coming back to rough, old games every now and then, to keep my values in check, and there's few that I have a better time with. If you're going through the heavy-hitter NES games, and you're stuck looking at stuff like Zelda 2 and Startropics, maybe give Hebereke a shot first.
This review contains spoilers
I think Yakuza 8's tone is best summarised by a multipart sidequest, where an old man asks you to comfort his dying wife by finding a way to make it snow in Hawaii. By the end of it, Kasuga is on a rooftop throwing handfuls of shaved ice with a gang of naked nappy fetishists.
Fun is fun. It is. It can be difficult to enjoy when we're more interested in the serious stuff, though. For Kasuga, Yakuza 8 really works. After all the homeless villages, abandoned buildings and sewer dungeons of 7, it's great to see him having fun in friendly, sunny Hawaii, pressing the Aloha Button to befriend everyone in town with his infectious enthusiasm. This is still an RPG, which only makes sense for the man who found his role models in Dragon Quest. It's really weird to use this game to attempt to tell a very significant chapter in Kazuma Kiryu's story at the same time.
I'm not saying they did a bad job of it. Just weird. In its later sections, the story gets quite relentless in recalling events from previous entries, and paying homage to the earliest games. So it's weird that he's doing it all as an RPG, imagining aggressors as Dragon Quest-style monsters, forming a party of Ichiban Kasuga's friends, and keeping everyone who ever held a personal significance to his past at a distance. It never really convinced me. I didn't fear for his life. They'd surely be doing better by Kaz if these were to be his final moments.
Yakuza 8 also pairs Kasuga against a new rival character of dubious morals. It's easy to see what they're doing. Kasuga inherited Kiryu's earnesty and selflessness, and Majima's larger than life personality. That leaves Yutaka Yamai with Kiryu's seriousness and Majima's unpredictable scariness. The two have a fairly similar dynamic, and it could feel like we're retreading old ground before long, but it still feels fresh right now. It's still surprising when scary Yamai goes against the odds to do a favour for Kasuga. With Majima, there was always a sense that it was fun for him to keep Kiryu-chan around, and maybe he was toying with him. If Yamai does it, it's because there's more humanity to him than he lets on. I don't know how deep you can mine that, but it didn't take long for Majima's shtick to get comically worn out, either. That kind of worked, though, as he became a lovable irritant against Kazuma's stoicism. I guess Yamai could serve to pull Kasuga back in line if he's going off the rails, but that's all up in the air at this point.
Anyway, story and tone aside, the game is fun! That's what they're going for, here. Bright, cheerful holiday setting. There's a Crazy Taxi homage food delivery minigame, a Pokémon Snap parody where you photograph wandering perverts, and an enormous number of big daft sidequests. It's quite happy to get loud, stupid and obnoxious, but it works when it's paired with characters you really like and believe in. Even the most lowbrow public event can be fun if you've got good friends with you. Again, this is more Kasuga's game than Kiryu's, though the message of opening up and putting your trust in others does play into his story, even if it's a little awkward in a game that's this Kasuga-hued.
It's a bit all over the place, really. A game this enormous lies on its variety, but it undermines the tonal shifts quite often. There's serious stuff here, and curiously, a lot of overlapping themes with MGS1. The failings of nuclear waste disposal, the discovery of a vengeful brother, and a new generation of soldiers/yakuza in a world that no longer needs them. Besides that, it's quite refreshing to see a Yakuza take on American culture, with its racist police and cruel disregard of the homeless. It's fun to see these topics covered by a series with this kind of poetic melodrama and infallible heroes.
Seeing a Yakuza game that primarily takes place in an English-speaking country is a real sign of how far the series' global popularity has come. They've incorporated American writers and voice talent in a way that would have seemed inconceivable back in their struggling PS3 days. There's a fairly absurd conceit that pretty much everyone in Hawaii is a fluent Japanese speaker, and the game pretty much forgets the dynamic of non-English speakers exploring an American city after a few hours. The Japanese audio track has a fairly awkward approach to it, really. Characters who are written as bilingual sometimes have separate actors for their English and Japanese dialogue. A few of the bigger characters have their Japanese actors record both parts, and some of them are supposed to be native-born American citizens. Suffice to say, they're not very convincing, and the subtitles are doing a lot of heavy lifting. If you want to play a version of this game with fully coherent English dialogue, there's a full voice track just for you. I'm just glad these games give global audiences a reason to become Akio Otsuka fans.
Even if they don't really work for Kazuma's part of the game, I still find the RPG parodies cute. Some of the Pokémon stuff, about how Hawaii is a "different region", "blessed by the Sun and the Moon" made me smile. They're working overtime, not only translating in-jokey dialogue for Japanese fans who know Pokémon, but turning them into jokes based on how the franchise has been presented in the west for the last 25 years. Yakuza localisation staff ought to have the same level of societal respect as astronauts and medical scientists, and I'm totally in their camp when they do something corny and absurd like explaining that Sujimon are dubious figures who make people around them "Super Jittery". Thousands of white guys know how to play mahjong because of the boundless effort of these professionals. We should embrace their sweatiest reconstructions of stupid Japanese puns.
Yakuza 8 is huge, features multiple cities, and a bunch of optional content. There's one that overwhelmed my playthrough, though, taking me out of the thrust of the story for almost a full week-
DONDOKO ISLAND
Dondoko Island introduces itself as a straight-up Animal Crossing: New Horizons clone. It's a tropical holiday resort that you have to help to rebuild. You catch fish and insects, chop down trees, break rocks and construct furniture to sell to the shop. It makes no secret of its inspiration. It's a blatant parody. The shop even swaps out its three pieces of furniture on display each day. It's once the grounding has been established that it really shows its true form. You're attempting to make the island as pleasant for visitors as possible, to get cash. This isn't Animal Crossing. It's an old Maxis/Bullfrog PC sim game on top of Animal Crossing. It's frighteningly addictive. Each day is a rush to collect resources, construct souvenirs and attractions for the visitors, and defend the island from fly-tipping pirates. There are actual real-time fights in this, though they're simplified to one-button attacks and dodges to keep things snappy. You have a life-bar, and if the enemies do too much damage, you might want to call it an early night to fully recover. You'll also want to upgrade your tools to fight and mine more efficiently as you make the most of each day. The days last about 10 minutes a piece, and feels ever more frantic as your resort and visitor numbers expand. Got to fill out that daily checklist, gather the resources for that dream project and maybe even fix up your house a little, if you somehow find the time somewhere. You try to be as efficient as possible, but there's no chance you're getting everything done. Thankfully, there is a definite end to the expansion and subplot. A point where you can call your work done, and return to the main story. Even after that, though, it remains one of the easiest sources of income in the game. When you're short of scratch for a new weapon, it's very easy to jump back on Dolphine and sink a few more days into island management.
Yakuza 8 is fun. It's mock-significant, and having finished it, I don't know how much of its story will have long-term impact. We got a few new characters out of it, and some more depth to their relationships, but they continue to kick the can down the road with Kazuma Kiryu's hypothetically inevitable departure. I never felt like Kasuga's crew were the most important people in Kazuma's life, or that the new baddies really held that much personal significance to him. If we're going to get Kazuma Kiryu stories, they'll need to be in Kazuma Kiryu games. As good as it may be, it just doesn't fit into an Ichiban Kasuga one. I never thought I'd end this asking for another Kazuma Kiryu game, but we're not ending his story like this.
Fun is fun. It is. It can be difficult to enjoy when we're more interested in the serious stuff, though. For Kasuga, Yakuza 8 really works. After all the homeless villages, abandoned buildings and sewer dungeons of 7, it's great to see him having fun in friendly, sunny Hawaii, pressing the Aloha Button to befriend everyone in town with his infectious enthusiasm. This is still an RPG, which only makes sense for the man who found his role models in Dragon Quest. It's really weird to use this game to attempt to tell a very significant chapter in Kazuma Kiryu's story at the same time.
I'm not saying they did a bad job of it. Just weird. In its later sections, the story gets quite relentless in recalling events from previous entries, and paying homage to the earliest games. So it's weird that he's doing it all as an RPG, imagining aggressors as Dragon Quest-style monsters, forming a party of Ichiban Kasuga's friends, and keeping everyone who ever held a personal significance to his past at a distance. It never really convinced me. I didn't fear for his life. They'd surely be doing better by Kaz if these were to be his final moments.
Yakuza 8 also pairs Kasuga against a new rival character of dubious morals. It's easy to see what they're doing. Kasuga inherited Kiryu's earnesty and selflessness, and Majima's larger than life personality. That leaves Yutaka Yamai with Kiryu's seriousness and Majima's unpredictable scariness. The two have a fairly similar dynamic, and it could feel like we're retreading old ground before long, but it still feels fresh right now. It's still surprising when scary Yamai goes against the odds to do a favour for Kasuga. With Majima, there was always a sense that it was fun for him to keep Kiryu-chan around, and maybe he was toying with him. If Yamai does it, it's because there's more humanity to him than he lets on. I don't know how deep you can mine that, but it didn't take long for Majima's shtick to get comically worn out, either. That kind of worked, though, as he became a lovable irritant against Kazuma's stoicism. I guess Yamai could serve to pull Kasuga back in line if he's going off the rails, but that's all up in the air at this point.
Anyway, story and tone aside, the game is fun! That's what they're going for, here. Bright, cheerful holiday setting. There's a Crazy Taxi homage food delivery minigame, a Pokémon Snap parody where you photograph wandering perverts, and an enormous number of big daft sidequests. It's quite happy to get loud, stupid and obnoxious, but it works when it's paired with characters you really like and believe in. Even the most lowbrow public event can be fun if you've got good friends with you. Again, this is more Kasuga's game than Kiryu's, though the message of opening up and putting your trust in others does play into his story, even if it's a little awkward in a game that's this Kasuga-hued.
It's a bit all over the place, really. A game this enormous lies on its variety, but it undermines the tonal shifts quite often. There's serious stuff here, and curiously, a lot of overlapping themes with MGS1. The failings of nuclear waste disposal, the discovery of a vengeful brother, and a new generation of soldiers/yakuza in a world that no longer needs them. Besides that, it's quite refreshing to see a Yakuza take on American culture, with its racist police and cruel disregard of the homeless. It's fun to see these topics covered by a series with this kind of poetic melodrama and infallible heroes.
Seeing a Yakuza game that primarily takes place in an English-speaking country is a real sign of how far the series' global popularity has come. They've incorporated American writers and voice talent in a way that would have seemed inconceivable back in their struggling PS3 days. There's a fairly absurd conceit that pretty much everyone in Hawaii is a fluent Japanese speaker, and the game pretty much forgets the dynamic of non-English speakers exploring an American city after a few hours. The Japanese audio track has a fairly awkward approach to it, really. Characters who are written as bilingual sometimes have separate actors for their English and Japanese dialogue. A few of the bigger characters have their Japanese actors record both parts, and some of them are supposed to be native-born American citizens. Suffice to say, they're not very convincing, and the subtitles are doing a lot of heavy lifting. If you want to play a version of this game with fully coherent English dialogue, there's a full voice track just for you. I'm just glad these games give global audiences a reason to become Akio Otsuka fans.
Even if they don't really work for Kazuma's part of the game, I still find the RPG parodies cute. Some of the Pokémon stuff, about how Hawaii is a "different region", "blessed by the Sun and the Moon" made me smile. They're working overtime, not only translating in-jokey dialogue for Japanese fans who know Pokémon, but turning them into jokes based on how the franchise has been presented in the west for the last 25 years. Yakuza localisation staff ought to have the same level of societal respect as astronauts and medical scientists, and I'm totally in their camp when they do something corny and absurd like explaining that Sujimon are dubious figures who make people around them "Super Jittery". Thousands of white guys know how to play mahjong because of the boundless effort of these professionals. We should embrace their sweatiest reconstructions of stupid Japanese puns.
Yakuza 8 is huge, features multiple cities, and a bunch of optional content. There's one that overwhelmed my playthrough, though, taking me out of the thrust of the story for almost a full week-
DONDOKO ISLAND
Dondoko Island introduces itself as a straight-up Animal Crossing: New Horizons clone. It's a tropical holiday resort that you have to help to rebuild. You catch fish and insects, chop down trees, break rocks and construct furniture to sell to the shop. It makes no secret of its inspiration. It's a blatant parody. The shop even swaps out its three pieces of furniture on display each day. It's once the grounding has been established that it really shows its true form. You're attempting to make the island as pleasant for visitors as possible, to get cash. This isn't Animal Crossing. It's an old Maxis/Bullfrog PC sim game on top of Animal Crossing. It's frighteningly addictive. Each day is a rush to collect resources, construct souvenirs and attractions for the visitors, and defend the island from fly-tipping pirates. There are actual real-time fights in this, though they're simplified to one-button attacks and dodges to keep things snappy. You have a life-bar, and if the enemies do too much damage, you might want to call it an early night to fully recover. You'll also want to upgrade your tools to fight and mine more efficiently as you make the most of each day. The days last about 10 minutes a piece, and feels ever more frantic as your resort and visitor numbers expand. Got to fill out that daily checklist, gather the resources for that dream project and maybe even fix up your house a little, if you somehow find the time somewhere. You try to be as efficient as possible, but there's no chance you're getting everything done. Thankfully, there is a definite end to the expansion and subplot. A point where you can call your work done, and return to the main story. Even after that, though, it remains one of the easiest sources of income in the game. When you're short of scratch for a new weapon, it's very easy to jump back on Dolphine and sink a few more days into island management.
Yakuza 8 is fun. It's mock-significant, and having finished it, I don't know how much of its story will have long-term impact. We got a few new characters out of it, and some more depth to their relationships, but they continue to kick the can down the road with Kazuma Kiryu's hypothetically inevitable departure. I never felt like Kasuga's crew were the most important people in Kazuma's life, or that the new baddies really held that much personal significance to him. If we're going to get Kazuma Kiryu stories, they'll need to be in Kazuma Kiryu games. As good as it may be, it just doesn't fit into an Ichiban Kasuga one. I never thought I'd end this asking for another Kazuma Kiryu game, but we're not ending his story like this.
Buckshot Roulette
2023
put ur balls on the line against a demonic scrub daddy inside john kramers apartment. incredible attention to detail
It's half of a good game! The instant you hit the halfway point and you have to go through the first half backwards while escorting an NPC the entire time is really rough.
The additional mechanics in this game are interesting. Some of them end up being more frustrating than anything, but I will always love the mechanics around your safe room slowly getting haunted over time and turning your one point of respite into a hostile zone.
The additional mechanics in this game are interesting. Some of them end up being more frustrating than anything, but I will always love the mechanics around your safe room slowly getting haunted over time and turning your one point of respite into a hostile zone.
